


Indoor Living

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [89]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Crying, Deaf Character, Disability, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 01:45:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17034036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Quarantine isn't all it's cracked up to be.





	Indoor Living

**Author's Note:**

> aaaand that's 500k! wow wow wow.

One Thursday night I was curled up on the couch in the office, wearing my mask and squished up as close as I could get to the air purifier and looking out the window at the moon hanging low over the city. I could just make out some people down on the street, disappearing in the darkness and reappearing under lamp posts. I barely even really noticed the vibration through the floor, but I could tell when it stopped, and a minute later Brian appeared in the doorway. He sighed, looking at me. **Your eyes.**

I pressed the back of my hand against one of them. “Bad?”

 **Yeah. You okay?**

I nodded and moved the mask out of the way to sneeze a few times. Normally I'd never be in the apartment while Brian was vacuuming. Okay, let's be real, normally Brian would never fucking vacuum; that's what cleaning services are for. But we couldn't have people traipsing through the apartment right now, and I'd get wheezy—wheezier—if we went more than a few days without dusting and vacuuming, and I couldn't get out of the house and not breathe in all the shit Brian was stirring up while he cleaned, so...here we were, me and my mask and my air purifier and my swollen eyes.

Brian said, **I'm done in there, just give everything a few minutes to settle down and you should be good.**

I coughed a little. **Okay.**

**You're having trouble. Come on, you need to wash this crap off you.**

He brought me to the shower and rinsed me off, sucking water off my collarbone, and got handsy with me under the spray. I missed full-on, drag-out, screaming sex like I cannot fucking explain, and even though I could probably have managed getting fucked by then, if Brian took it slow, I couldn't risk any kind of skin tear, and every time I'd tried to top Brian I'd ended up getting too winded and having to tap out. Brian was frustrated, because, you know, that, and also because even though we hadn't talked about it I knew he hadn't been tricking that much—he'd do it at the gym sometimes because the options felt healthier than the club kids at Nova, I guess, and because he could shower right after instead of waiting until he got home, since last time he'd gone out dancing he'd come home and taken a half hour shower and said he felt like he'd been swimming in germ soup—and a man can only live on hand jobs for so long. Just another thing to add to the list, but if I was being honest I spent a lot less time concentrating on sex than I did the creeping sensation that the apartment was getting smaller and smaller.

“What day is it?” I asked Brian, as he washed my hair. 

**Seventh. You are so stuffed up.** He tilted my head back under the water. 

Seventh. I tried to remember what day it was that we were sitting in my neurologist's office, hearing I had the same number of white blood cells as an underfed kitten. It was the fourth or the fifth of November, I think. Over a month ago.

I'd been in this apartment for over a month. It was too cold to go out on the balcony for more than a minute or two, but I'd do that every once in a while, just to gulp down some fresh air even though it made my chest burn like it was on fire, but my immunologist—over email, because I couldn't actually go to a doctor's appointment, hadn't seen my fucking therapist in a month—kept reminding me how important it was to stay warm, not to put any stress on my immune system than I absolutely had to. Brian took that really seriously and was always putting socks on me.

Still, when I was sneezing again the second we were out of the shower, I said, **I need to open a window for a little. This dust is driving me crazy.**

He looked at me critically. **Yeah, okay. Put a hoodie on. Socks.** What did I tell you?

I pulled the chair in the bedroom over the window and put on warm clothes and curled up next to it. Brian had goosebumps on his skin and he shivered a little while he changed, and normally I wouldn't have been able to take my eyes off that, not for a second, but I kept turning away tonight and looking out at the water, the street, the moon, the people.

I started to shake after a little while, even though I tried to hide it, and Brian came up behind me and wrapped his arms all the way around me, kissing up my cheek. He rubbed his hands together to warm them and slipped them underneath my sweatshirt, and I tilted my head back and exposed my throat for him to nuzzle.

I felt my heart speed up, and God, I wanted him so badly, but I felt kind of dizzy and out-of-it, and I didn't know why.

 **Cold air's hurting your lungs,** he signed on me.

 **It is?** Oh. It turns out you can get used to not breathing, a little.

**Sounds bad. Time to warm up.**

He closed the window and pulled me up and brought me to the bed, fussing with the covers for so long that I eventually figured out he was being over the top on purpose to make me laugh. Brian can always tell when I'm having a rough night, mentally, but I think it's hard for him to see the difference between when I'm just feeling a little down and when I'm really...on the brink of something. To be fair, it can be hard for me too.

It wasn't really that night.

 **You look hot all bundled up,** he said.

Still, he made me happy.

 **Yeah, like a sexy Eskimo,** I said.

He crawled on top of me, carefully keeping his weight off my chest. He kissed one eyelid, then the other. **Poor allergies,** he signed on me, his hands, my nose.

**Kind of the least of my worries.**

**I think right now that'd be seizures,** he said, and he took my legs and played with them, pushing my knees up to my chest, stretching them back out. **Hazel thinks I made them up.**

**Probably not, since I did seizure-fling a cup at her last week.**

**None for two days. Very impressive.** He bent my knee a few times. **So strong, look at this.**

 **There haven't been many this week,** I said, and he nodded.

**Having to change your meds might end up being good in the long run. These work better than the last ones.**

I didn't answer, because what could I really say? He was right, of course; it was good that I was going to be on meds that reduced my seizures more than the last couple we'd tried did, and on a macro scale that mattered a lot more than the fact that I felt horrible right now.

On the other hand, I felt really horrible right now.

And he noticed, tilting his head to the side as he put my legs down. **You are really having a hard time with the breathing thing tonight, huh?**

**It's not the best.**

**That's allergies?**

I nodded and snuffled into a handful of tissues.

**Deep breath...yeah, okay. Back on oxygen tonight.**

Brian had been trying to wean me off of it at night—I think it freaked him out, I don't know—but honestly I hated the nights we did without it. I always felt shitty and gaspy and like I couldn't fall asleep because if I did I'd just stop breathing forever. 

I put the cannula in place and we made out for a while, and after a while Brian started grinding against me, maybe unconsciously at first, but he kept going and I nodded, even though I was so out of breath already. He kept going, not too fast, checking in every once in a while to make sure I was okay, but we both came quickly and around the same time, in our pants like fucking teenagers, and there was no way I was gathering up the energy or the oxygen to shower again and Brian knew it, so he stripped out of his sweatpants and cleaned me up a little with some tissues and a lot with his mouth. He curled up around me, tugging on the neck of my sweatshirt so he could kiss my shoulders. **Love me?** I said, and he nodded and buried his face in the crook of my neck. We stayed there for a while before he got my meds and turned out the lights and set his alarm and apologized sleepily for messing up my allergies and conked out hugging my arm to his chest, and every second he wasn't talking to me, looking at me, the temporary calm drained out of me and half an hour later I was right back where I was, feeling the walls move and still very, very awake.

It was so stupid. I couldn't stay awake for the life of me during the day, but as soon as night came around and I was actually supposed to be asleep, I'd lie here feeling like I was going to come out of my skin if I stayed still. I was itchy and miserable and still sneezing all the time and trying not to wake up Brian, and the whole thing just fucking sucked.

I got up after an hour. The oxygen tank is heavy as shit and normally when I walk around with it I just pull it behind me, even though Brian bitches that I'm scuffing up the floors, but I must assume that's pretty loud, so I lifted it up and set it down every few steps when I got tired, some kind of weird three-legged limp out to the living room, me, socked feet, oxyen tank. I wanted to get over to the window seat, but I got so tired before I even made it to the couch, so I ended up sitting cross legged on the rug trying to catch my breath and crane my neck so I could see outside at the same time. 

I realized the balcony doors were closer, and if I stood by them maybe I'd be able to see more than just the railing, so I got up and hauled the oxygen tank a few more steps but it became clear pretty quickly I wasn't make it all the way there. I sat back down and tried to cough quietly, and then I was hit with that sudden wave of tired like I fucking am nowadays, the kind of thing that used to mean a seizure but now just meant I have the stamina of an arthritic goldfish, and the next thing I knew I was waking up kind of groggy God knows how long after, still curled up on the rug. I was groggy and confused and stuffed up and I tried to stand up and was very confused by the tugging on the cannula until I remembered the oxygen tank, and I tried to pick it up but I couldn't pick it up and stand at the same time and I couldn't figure out what order to do them and everything was so heavy and hard and eventually I just went, “Brian? Brian?”

He came stumbling out of the bedroom a minute later, squinty and bedheaded. **What the fuck? Did you have a seizure?**

“No, I just...” God, I was so sleepy. “I got up for a minute.”

**You're on the floor.**

I pointed to the tank. “It's too heavy.”

 **Yeah, I know, that's why you're supposed to stay put.** He lifted it easily and pulled me up. **Come on.**

 **I want to see the stars.** I stumbled a little, and he caught me.

 **Bed,** he said firmly, and he half-dragged, half-carried me back. **Don't get up again, moron,** he signed, already well on his way to falling back asleep, and he pinned me close to him with his arm across my chest like a seatbelt and I looked up at the ceiling and wondered how high it was and thought about the glue traps my dad used to put under the sink and behind the radiator and I thought, _I wonder if this is how mice feel._

**

I felt really sick in the morning. I wouldn't get up to shower or have breakfast, and after a while Brian gave up trying and I sat there and panted while he rushed around, bitching that he couldn't find the tie he wanted. 

“Can you stay?” I said.

 **I won't leave until Hazel gets here,** he said, barely looking at me.

“No, I mean...can you stay here today? Just for an hour?”

**I have a meeting at nine.**

“Can I come with you?”

He finally stopped moving around and turned to me. **Justin, come on.**

 **I think I'm getting sick again,** I said, which would probably have been a lot more alarming for him if I didn't say it every fucking morning, but in my defense I felt like I was getting sick again every fucking morning and last time I did I almost _goddamn died_ so I figured I got to be a little antsy about that right now. 

He sighed. **What's wrong?** I could see him counting minutes in his head. Time he was wasting reassuring me. 

**My sinuses hurt.**

His face softened a little. **Yeah, I fucked up your allergies last night.**

**My throat hurts.**

**That's...your allergies.**

I sneezed a few times and he gave me that head tilt and plucked a few tissues out and cupped them over my nose. **See?** I said.

**Yeah, again...**

**I think I'm sick.**

He kissed my forehead. **You don't have a fever,** he said. **Your shitty ear looks better. You're not sick again.**

**Can you please stay?**

Another kiss, between the eyes this time. **Babysitting is Hazel's job,** he said. I pulled away, and he groaned and sat down on the foot of the bed. **It's a joke.**

**Sure.**

**Sunshine, what the fuck do you want from me, here? I have a meeting, and you know you can't come to the office.**

**I'll wear a mask.**

He stood up. **Stop making me be the asshole.**

“Nobody's got a gun to your head,” I mumbled while he started searching the room again.

He held up his tie. 

“Hooray,” I said flatly, hopefully.

**You're going to get frown lines, you know.**

“I can't breathe,” I said softly.

He bent over the bed and pulled me into his arms, and I clung for a long time.

 **I'll come home at lunch,** he said. **Try to rest until then, okay?**

I was going to try to paint today. I hadn't accomplished a fucking thing in God knows how long.

I tried to talk and just started coughing, and I never know when a fit starts whether it's going to be a normal one or one of the one that doesn't fucking stop, but Brian can somehow always tell. He braced me under his arm and got the trash can onto my lap before I coughed so hard I threw up. It took a good four minutes before I could draw in a breath that didn't make my lungs freak immediately right back out. That feels a lot longer than it sounds.

 **There we go,** Brian said. **All done now. You're all done.**

**Yeah.**

He took the trash can away. **I think for all these drugs to work you're supposed to keep them down for more than ten minutes,** he said, rubbing a circle on my back and handing me some water to sip.

I panted. **Sorry.**

 **Pneumonia's really not a good time, huh,** he said.

“Yeah, it's not my favorite.”

He paused. **I know it's a bad day. I see it, okay? I do.**

A bad day. It wasn't a bad day.

But fuck. He was trying. I nodded.

**I'll bring you clam chowder from that fucking hole in the wall you're obsessed with. And garlic bread. Okay?**

“Yeah,” I said, but I still couldn't catch my fucking breath. “I need to go outside.”

He shook his head. **It's twenty degrees and sleeting.**

“I can't breathe in here.”

 **That's your lungs. It's not the room. Cold air's going to fuck you up even more.** He looked at me for a long moment, then opened up the dresser and took out one of his sweaters. I put my arms up and let him pull it over my head and arrange the collar. **There.**

 **All fixed now,** I said, not as bitter as I'd intended. It was just really warm inside that sweater, and it smelled like him.

 **Good.** He nodded towards the living room. **Doorbell.**

**Okay. Can you—**

**Yeah, I'll tell her you're having a rough morning.**

**Okay. Thanks.** Brian debriefed Hazel every morning and she gave him a report every evening. I didn't know exactly what they said to each other, and it was the kind of thing that I had a vague feeling I would care about if I weren't so busy feeling like trash on a cracker. As it was...whatever. Let them handle me.

He lifted my chin and gave me a long kiss. **Get some sleep. I'll fuck Evan in the copy room for you.**

**Wow, do not do that.**

He laughed. **Later.**

**

I always felt kind of bad for sleeping when Hazel was there. I know it's dumb. Brian was constantly reminding me that she's not some guest I'm here to entertain, and she'd actually prefer to get paid to sit on the couch watching her telenovelas while I sleep or read or whatever, but...I don't know. It's just so fucking weird having someone in your house all the time, a total stranger who's going to touch you and who you're supposed to tell if you're feeling bad and who opens up your refrigerator and takes out the food your partner left for you like she lives here. And it's not that I didn't like Hazel, because I did, actually. She never acted like I was bothering her or overreacting when I was worried that a zit was a staph infection or when I couldn't make up my mind whether or not I wanted a neb or oxygen or to go to bed, and she didn't hover over me either, and Brian liked her and that was more important, honestly, since he was the one talking to her. Because she didn't sign, and it's just...

I probably can't explain to you how isolating it is to be around someone all day who doesn't speak your language. It's worse than being alone, because you can't relax, but you can't communicate, either. And obviously I could talk to her in English—and I did—but all she could do was point and nod and sign the few things she'd picked up, _food, medicine, Brian, help_ and it was just...it was uncomfortable, being around her and not being able to communicate with her and not knowing how to be myself with her in my house, and I couldn't even begin to read her lips or judge her facial expressions with the mask in place, and it was another thing that made the whole apartment feel like...well.

I slept most of the morning and woke up a little bit before Brian got back feeling really heavy and dizzy and nauseous. I'd been having a hard time waking up ever since I first got sick, and some days were just worse than others, which was fucking frustrating because everyone kept telling me I was getting better and I couldn't figure out if they were wrong or I was wrong or if they knew I wasn't getting better and they were just fucking lying to me to keep me calm.

The whole thing was so fucking surreal, because everyone kept talking about when I was sick like it was something in the past and I kept worrying about getting sick _again_ like the last round of it was over, and here I was feeling so fucking goddamn awful that three months ago if I'd felt like this it would have scared the shit out of me. I don't really know how to describe it. It was kind of like having a really awful flu on top of a shitty allergy attack. It was just so fucking exhausting and so, so depressing, and it didn't feel like it was ever going to get better.

Hazel came in, masked and gloved, when I started coughing, and she turned the humidifer on and put my oxygen back in place and rubbed my back while I tried to suck air in through these fucking cement factories I called lungs nowadays. She gave me some water and helped me to the bathroom and I gradually started to feel a little more human. I wanted to be out of bed when Brian got here for lunch, so I grabbed a sketchpad and a pencil and settled down in the bay window in the living room. I watched people stream by on the sidewalk and three people who looked like they were arguing on the corner, and I tried to draw them, no pressure, just shaping them out, but my hand felt heavy and sloppy and just moving the pencil was so goddamn exhausting that I had to set it aside after a couple minutes. I set it down carefully and pressed my forehead against the window, watching the cabs drive out of view.

Hazel got off the couch a couple minutes later and went to the door, so I knew Brian was home. They talked for a few minutes, then he came over, rubbing hand sanitizer between his palms. He sat down across from me on the window seat, pulling his long legs up against mine. He handed me a paper bag with soup and some bread and picked up the sketchpad. I looked away while he leafed through my attempts for the day, but he raised his eyes when I sneezed a few times.

 **Still?** he said.

**Yeah, it hasn't stopped.**

**Had Benadryl?**

I sneezed again and wiped my nose on some napkins. **I don't know. Ask Hazel.**

**Hazel thinks you're depressed.**

**That's very perceptive, seeing as she's seen my prescriptions.**

**Yeah, well, she thinks you're in the bad place. Eat.**

I took the lid off the soup. **What did you tell her?**

**I told her after being this sick for this long probably anyone would be depressed.**

I stretched my legs out on top of his and looked out the window. He stole a piece of my garlic bread and chewed it while he watched me.

 **Are you trying to see inside my brain?** I asked him.

**Yeah.**

I leaned my head against the wall.

 **You're skyping with Lauren, right?** he said.

**Yeah.**

**I need to be worried?**

I shrugged a little. **I'm not happy. There's nothing we can do.**

He ran his palm up and down my leg. **Jane and Emily are coming over on Sunday. And Evan said he'd text you, did he?**

I shrugged. **Haven't looked.**

**He wants to come over tonight, watch movies, make you dinner. Listen to you cough.**

**He's Deaf.**

**He's hard-of-hearing, trust me, he can hear that cough.** He squeezed my knee. **Maybe he can stay over. Slumber party.**

**Every visit with me is a slumber party.**

**True.**

He still looked so goddamn worried. He was trying so hard. And I just couldn't think of anything to say to be reassuring that he wouldn't see right through, and that would make him even sadder.

So I just said, **When are my next blood tests?**

He studied me, head cocked to the side, then said, **Two more weeks.**

**What if we did it this week?**

**I don't...think you're going to get any change this week, Sunshine.**

**That x-ray version works on my bone marrow now?**

He shrugged. **We can if you want. But it's just going to make you feel more defeated if we rush it and you don't get what you want.**

**Who needs Lauren when I already have you?**

**Jesus, who needs you when I already have an asshole preteen?**

I kicked his knee. **You.**

He sighed deeply. **Apparently. Eat your soup.**

I ate for a while and looked out the window, and he read emails on his phone, absentmindedly cupping my bare feet in his lap every once in a while. **Socks** he signed to himself, really small, like he didn't know he was doing it, and I just...wished so hard that the swell of love inside of me was enough to make me happy. I fucking hated that it wasn't. 

“There's got to be somewhere I can go,” I said softly, after a minute.

He looked up. **What?**

**I said there's got to be somewhere I can go. I know I can't breathe outside and I can't be around people but there's got to be somewhere...**

**Somewhere inside, warm, clean, without people?**

**Yeah.**

He held up a hand and gestured around us.

 **Somewhere else,** I said.

 **Someday I'll get you a summer home,** he said, in that smarmy way I'm not supposed to know is sincere.

I leaned my head against the wall. **By the beach.**

**By the beach.**

I imagined the wind off the sea and closed my eyes.

**

Evan came home from work that evening with Brian, their arms full of groceries, talking out loud to each other as they came in the front door. It's so fucking weird to see Evan talk. I always forget he can. Evan unloaded bags in the kitchen while Brian got the day's wrap up from Hazel. She waved to me on her way out the door, and Brian came over to where I was curled up on the couch, rubbing antiseptic between his hands, his face creased with concern. I used to love that look. Used to revel in the proof that he cared about me.

 **I'm okay,** I said.

**You should have called me. She should have called me.**

**It really wasn't anything. I didn't even fall. I was out of bed, my vision started tunneling in, she got me back in bed.**

**And you're sure it wasn't a seizure.**

**Hazel would know.**

He sighed and kissed my forehead. **I thought we were past the fainting thing.**

**Shitty blood counts.**

**Lack of oxygen.**

**Why not both?** I said, and sneezed hard enough that Brian winced.

 **How do you feel now?** he said.

I just shook my head a little.

He studied me for a minute, then nodded. **Okay. Stay where you are, get some rest. We're going to make dinner.**

**He's going to make dinner.**

**I'm incredible company. Lie down,** he said, mock-exasperated.

So I lay there and watched Brian and Evan in the kitchen. They have this really funny relationship that I've never seen Brian have with any of the other guys I've dated or even with anyone. I guess the closest comparison is Michael, or maybe Derek, but also kind of...me? It's hard to explain. Brian and Evan aren't together in any sort of romantic or sexual way, but they're also not super...not together. Evan makes Brian laugh more than anyone besides me, and Evan totally follows Brian around a puppy. They're also both goddamn _obsessed_ with me, and I'm always catching them talking about me and stilling their hands when I walk into the room or changing the subject in some way they probably think is natural. It's good. They both needed someone to talk about this medical shit, and God knows I wasn't...present enough yet to be that person for either of them. So normally I'm happy to watch them. It makes me feel glad that they have each other, and safe that they care about me, but tonight...

Nothing was how it was supposed to be tonight, and it just made me feel too goddamn important when I wanted to disappear, and too goddamn held together when I wanted to...

I watched them bitch about the right way to cook a chicken and shove each other around and laugh and talk about my allergies and my sleep schedule. At one point I started coughing really violently, and when it didn’t let up I saw them kind of hurrying around in the kitchen, and after a minute Brian came in with a heating pad that he held onto my chest while I tried to stop, and that helped a lot. When I was done he just hugged me, really gently. 

We ate roast chicken at the coffee table sitting on the floor cushions, but by then I was just feeling awful, and I was making no efforts to hide it. They didn’t even nag me about eating, and they always nag me about eating, so I knew I must have looked about as bad as I felt. **Jesus, come here,** Evan said abruptly at one point, and he pulled me into him and I took deep breaths through my nose so I wouldn’t throw up or pass out again, and I think I fell asleep there for a while with my head on his shoulder.

We ended up on the couch watching Singin’ in the Rain—combines me and Evan’s love of musicals, though I only like ones I saw before I went Deaf, with Brian’s fetish for movies made before anyone he’s ever met was born—with my head in Brian’s lap and my feet in Evan’s. I was coughing pretty constantly, even after Brian got me oxygen, and he kept a tight grip on my shoulder, steady, reassuring, while Evan patted my leg when the fits got bad. Eventually it was all just too fucking much, the motion of the movie and the coughing and the pain and the fucking _get me off this couch,_ and I turned and pushed my face into Brian's leg, my nails digging through his jeans, and he rested his palm on my head while Evan stretched out behind me, twisting his leg around mine, and for just a second, just a little second, there with all those hands on me I didn't feel trapped. I felt like a bird in a nest.

It only lasted a second.

Evan didn't sleep over because I was clearly crashing tonight, and I thought I was fine with that, I really did, and then as he was leaving I was craning my neck to seek the hallway through the open door and after it shut I started crying a little.

 **Jesus Christ,** Brian said. **He can come back tomorrow.**

“No, it's not...” I said, but I could breathe and cry at the same time, so I just shook my head and let Brian hold the oxygen mask over my face for a while. He was being sweet, handing me tissues and telling me to breathe, but it was so fucking frustrating that I couldn't talk and that he thought I was crying because, what, my boyfriend had gone home?

I tried to get ahold of myself, but I was so upset and freaked out and fucking...desperate, and even after I'd stopped crying I just sat there shaking. Brian was trying to soothe me, but he kept saying, **I know, I know,** and at one point I just snapped.

“You don't _fucking_ know,” I said.

He stayed still for a minute, then got up abruptly and went to the kitchen. He was cleaning up, allegedly, but even I could tell he was mostly just making a lot of noise.

He threw a pan into the sink and turned to me over the counter. **You know, I'm getting pretty fucking sick of this, Justin.**

I coughed into my elbow. **Maybe we are on the same page, then.**

**I get that you feel like shit. And I get that that's fucking awful and endless and you have to do it by yourself and nobody understands. But I did not do this you, and I'm getting pretty tired of being the bad guy when I'm...**

**When you're what?** I said. **Going out there and working and holding the family together? You think this is the set up I wanted?**

**I'm not having a good time here either.**

**Try it on top of not being able to breathe.**

**It's not my fucking fault!** he said, throwing down a dish rag. **I didn't kill your fucking immune system, I didn't give you pneumonia, I'm not the one making the fucking rules here.**

**I know you're not.**

**I get that you're fucking frustrated but I'm doing everything I can. I bring you stuff. I go visit the baby. I let people come over. I let you lie all over your fucking boyfriend and you're probably going to get fucking sick from that but I do it so you won't be miserable and it's not enough.**

I must have had some kind of look on my face from that, some kind of giveaway of the panic I felt rising up in me, because his expression changed.

 **I didn't mean it,** he said. **You're not going to get sick.**

I took a slow breath in.

 **You're fine,** he said. **You're not going to get sick, okay? You're okay.**

I sunk my head into my hands and tried to calm down and not think about the billions of fucking germs everywhere in the world all the fucking time trying to fucking kill me. A minute later I felt Brian's hand on the back of my head.

 **I'm sorry,** I said. **I know I'm being awful to you. I'll do better, okay?**

He shrugged. 

**It's not...** I started, and he watched me, waiting, but eventually I just shook my head and looked away. Because what the fuck could I say to him? He was doing everything for me. And none of this was his fault. There was no point making him feel bad about shit he couldn't do anything about. And he _could_ bring me heating pads and put me on oxygen and make me feel a little better, so if he thought that was the issue...

 **It's really bad tonight, isn't it?** he said.

**Yeah.**

**It hurts?**

We hadn't really talked about that. He's pretty used to me being sick at this point, but he gets upset about me being in pain. I nodded just a little.

He said we had to shower before bed, and after my little germ freakout I was more than happy to oblige, so I let him bring me in and begged him to run the water as hot as it would go. He held me tightly, keeping me upright when I started coughing, and I clung and tried not to hit his chest with my fist.

We went to bed after and he lay down next to me, stroking my cheek with one hand and just kind of...taking me in, I guess, I don't know. He had probably been planning on going out that night, especially if Evan was going to stay over to babysit me, and now he was stuck here with his bitchy partner who was too sick to fuck, going to bed at barely midnight.

“I'm trying,” I whispered, and Brian nodded and rested his head on my chest, and I remember thinking that maybe everything was going to be okay, and then...well, then the next morning happened.

It started out okay. I woke up and it was sunny outside. Brian wasn't there. I sat up and felt almost sort of okay, and I decided I was going to go sit out on the balcony before Brian could stop me. And as soon as I decided that, it became this absolutely primal need, worse that it had even been the day before. I don't really know how to describe it, it was like...if I didn't get outside right then I was going to die, or something.

So then of course as soon as I got up my leg started seizing and I fell. 

I landed kind of awkwardly, but I wasn't hurt or anything. Still, I couldn't get up, not until my leg was done shaking and probably not on my own for at least ten minutes after that because it was going to be weak and I was going to be all seizurey and stupid, and somehow that was just...that was the breaking point. I don't know. I started crying, way harder than I had the night before, and then I was just screaming for I don't know how long, screaming and sobbing and hitting the floor and kicking the bed and forgetting how the fuck to breathe, and at some point I looked up and Brian was standing in the doorway, frozen, his eyes huge on me.

I was scaring the everloving shit out of him, and that just made me cry harder.

“I can't do this,” I got out eventually. “I have to get outside, I can't stay inside anymore, I can't stand in this fucking apartment, I can't...” I tried to get up but ended up stumbling and landing on my knees, and I gripped my hair with one hand and my shirt with the other because if I didn't hold onto myself I was going to fucking fall into pieces. “I'm so scared all the time and I can't _breathe_ and everything is happening without me and this fucking apartment never changes and there's a whole world out there but it feels like it's not even there, and...I'm doing it again, I'm doing it again, I'm yelling at you when it's not your fault, I know, I—”

 **Stop.** He came towards me and knelt down in front of me. **You yell, you go ahead, you yell.**

“I can't do this anymore, I've been here for a month, I'm going crazy, I'm losing my fucking mind. I can't, I can't...” I gasped for air, Brian's hands on my shoulders keeping me from fucking crumpling into a ball on the floor. “I know all of this is to keep me alive but holy shit I can't do this, I feel like I'm dying anyway, I feel like I already died.”

I just cried for the longest time, too hard to look at him, and we stayed there on the floor. He was signing something and finally I pulled myself together enough to look at him. His eyes were bright, and he was crying, just a little, not like I was, and he said, **I'm here with you, I am with you, I am with you,** over and over.

And I nodded and held onto him because God, what the fuck else could he offer me besides that, besides the promise that if I was going to go through hell he was going to do it too, that if something was going to hurt me it was going to hurt him too? Because he wasn't going through what I was, and he never could, and God, neither of us would ever want him to. But he was with me, he was down with me on the fucking floor of our apartment while I fell apart, and...sometimes you just need someone to see what is happening to you. Sometimes that's all anyone can do.

He picked me up eventually, once I'd started to quiet down, and brought me to bed and put oxygen on me because he said my lips were purple, and he lay behind me on the bed and held me for a long time. I must have really worn myself out, because the next thing I knew I was waking up and it was already starting to get dark outside. Brian was gone again, and I the memory of the morning kind of hit me like a truck. God, he was probably calling the fucking psych ward to see if they had a nice clean room so he could drop me off without having my death on his conscience. 

I coughed and stretched and pulled myself out of bed and slowly made my way out to the door. It was shut, which was kind of weird, because we usually leave it open unless there's company, so I had a vague thought that Brian might have had someone over, but that wasn't what was going on at all.

Our living room was covered in pictures, taped to every wall. The cliffs in Spain, the art museums in Florence, Brian on his back on a fountain in Milan, me eating octopus in Hong Kong. The sunset from that dumb camping trip the year before. Jane at Rockaway Beach. The two of us in LA, him squinting up at the sun, me looking up at him. Hundreds and hundreds of fucking pictures, covering the entire living room, and Brian taping up more as I stood there, his back to me.

“Brian?” I said.

He kind of froze, then slowly turned around looking kind of sheepish which is an odd look on Brian. **You weren't supposed to see it until I was done.**

“I...what are you doing?”

He shrugged. **You can't go out in the world. Thought I'd try to bring it to you.**

I bit my lip and touched a picture on the wall next to me. Brian standing on our hotel balcony in Sevilla, his features sharp but his eyes soft.

“Is it really all still out there?” I said, glad I couldn't hear how fucking stupid I sounded.

But Brian nodded, watching me.

 **It misses you too,** he said. **It can't wait for you to come home.**

“Soon?”

He nodded. **Soon.**

I took a deep a breath as I could. “Okay.”


End file.
